Monday, August 3, 2015

I now have a rudimentary version of a Science Fiction Magazine Database that works through your (internet) browser. The benefit of this approach is that it works on your home computer and/or LAN, does not require specialized database software such as Base or MS Access, and (at some future point) will be internet ready. However, it does require that you have MySQL and Apache (LAMP/WAMP) operating on a computer. There is still much work to be done.

Opening Screen

The image above is the opening (main) screen. From the opening screen one can do an author or story search. Additionally, one can display all magazine issues or filter by magazine.

Eventually, subsequent screens (as you can see below) will need to be redesigned to remove the Galaxy cover as it tends to be distracting in subsequent screens.

Note: The "Author" field contains a hyper-link. Clicking on it will display all stories written by that author.

Listing of Each Magazine Issue in the Database

My apologies to those reading other magazines. I have just been tracking Analog. The image below displays some of the F&SF magazines that have already been entered. Please be assured that this database can handle all magazines.

Note: The "Magazine Name" field contains a hyper-link. Clicking on it will display all stories for that particular issue.

Filtered Issue List

Selection of an Author

Display of all Stories Written by the Author Selected

Selection of a Magazine Issue

Display the Contents of the Selected Issue

Listing of All Stories Having "Pluto" in Their Title

Note: In the screen above there are hyper-links for both the author and magazine issue. Consequently, one can lookup either the author stories or the contents of the magazine issue.

This project still needs a lot of work. For example, I have not yet gotten around to developing editing screens. Turns out editing is much more complicated than simple data retrieval. Editing, when it is done, has been done through phpMyAdmin which works directly with MySQL.

Additionally, it seems that I will need to learn JavaScript for certain actions. Drat, yet another programming language to learn!!!

I anticipate that this browser based approach will be the final rendition in the development of this database. But then one should never say never. Eventually, I intend to complete it. But don't hold your breath.